Explorez tous les épisodes du podcast Bad at Sports
| Titre | Date | Durée | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Bad at Sports Episode 979: Valerie Carberry | 04 Nov 2026 | 01:01:25 | |
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews visit the library at GRAY in Chicago to talk with Valerie Carberry, the gallery's president and CEO, about what it takes to build a gallery across generations of artists, collectors, and communities. Carberry traces her path from working with historic American art in Chicago's River North gallery district to opening her own gallery in 2002, joining forces with Richard Gray Gallery in 2015, and helping develop GRAY's ambitious exhibition spaces. Along the way, the conversation turns to Theaster Gates's 2014 Retreat exhibition, the shifting meaning of "slacker" across generations, and how an established gallery can invite new audiences without abandoning its history. The three also discuss Roger Brown's California-period paintings and GRAY's exhibition Weathervane; Jaume Plensa's Crown Fountain and his new exhibition Beyond Silence; and the value of connecting artists such as Alex Katz and David Hockney to the contemporary present. Carberry reflects on GRAY's Chicago and New York programs, including Real Monsters in Bold Colors: Bob Thompson and Candida Alvarez, and makes a case for patient, artist-centered growth rather than chasing trends. It's a conversation about the commercial gallery as a cultural institution: a place where art history, stewardship, experimentation, and community can meet. Image: Weston Wells! Names Dropped: Valerie Carberry — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/news/valerie-carberry-appointed-president-and-chief-executive-officer-of-gray-chicago-and-new-york Duncan MacKenzie — https://badatsports.com/ Brian Andrews — https://badatsports.com/ Richard Gray — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/about Paul Gray — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/about Robert Henry Adams — https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/surveys/chicago/ryerson-and-burnham-libraries-art-institute-chicago/robert-henry-adams Theaster Gates — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/artists/theaster-gates Hamza Walker — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/retreat Romi Crawford — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/artists/theaster-gates Dieter Roelstraete — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/its-about-time Abigail Winograd — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/its-about-time Pope.L — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/its-about-time Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/its-about-time Jim Dine — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/video Roger Brown — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/roger-brown2 Jaume Plensa — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/jaume-plensa14 Alex Katz — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions David Hockney — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions Torkwase Dyson — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/past/all/all Candida Alvarez — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/7 Bob Thompson — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/7 Judy Ledgerwood — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/judy-ledgerwood José de Rivera — https://www.valeriecarberry.com/ Ellen Lanyon — https://www.pafa.org/ Evelyn Statsinger — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/video Thomas Hart Benton — https://americanart.si.edu/ Andy Warhol — https://www.warhol.org/ Jackson Pollock — https://www.moma.org/artists/4675 Mark Tansey — https://www.gagosian.com/artists/mark-tansey/ Galen Gerber — https://www.artic.edu/ David Salle — https://www.davidsalle.com/ Alexander Calder — https://www.calder.org/ GRAY — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/about Valerie Carberry Gallery — https://www.valeriecarberry.com/gallery-information.php Robert Henry Adams Fine Art — https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/surveys/chicago/ryerson-and-burnham-libraries-art-institute-chicago/robert-henry-adams School of the Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.saic.edu/ Roger Brown Study Collection — https://www.saic.edu/ South Side Community Art Center — https://www.sscartcenter.org/ Smart Museum of Art — https://smartmuseum.uchicago.edu/ Logan Center for the Arts — https://arts.uchicago.edu/logan-center Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts — https://www.pafa.org/ Black Artists Retreat — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/retreat Queens Museum — https://queensmuseum.org/ Lumpen Radio — https://www.lumpenradio.com/ Bad at Sports — https://badatsports.com/ Millennium Park — https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/dca/supp_info/millennium_park.html Whitney Museum of American Art — https://whitney.org/ Venice Biennale — https://www.labiennale.org/en/art White Cube — https://www.whitecube.com/ Gladstone Gallery — https://www.gladstonegallery.com/ Skarstedt — https://www.skarstedt.com/ Retreat (2014) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/retreat IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago (2026) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/its-about-time DRAW (curatorial collaboration) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/its-about-time Roger Brown: Weathervane (2026) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/roger-brown2 Jaume Plensa: Beyond Silence (2026) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/jaume-plensa14 Clouds (Jaume Plensa sculpture series) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/jaume-plensa14 Crown Fountain — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/jaume-plensa14 Real Monsters in Bold Colors: Bob Thompson and Candida Alvarez (2025) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/7 Judy Ledgerwood: Twilight in the Wilderness (2025) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/judy-ledgerwood Torkwase Dyson: Of Line and Memory (2024–25) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions/past/all/all Jim Dine (2017 GRAY Warehouse opening) — https://www.richardgraygallery.com/exhibitions Slacker (film) — https://www.criterion.com/films/408-slacker
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| Bad at Sports Episode 978: Delano Dunn | 28 Oct 2026 | 00:59:39 | |
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews visit the studio of artist Delano Dunn, whose dazzling collages combine the visual excess of the 1980s and '90s with the deeply uncomfortable histories embedded in American popular culture. Dunn's work is seductive by design. Glitter, holographic surfaces, bright colors, vintage advertisements, and fragments of historical imagery draw viewers into compositions that quickly reveal something considerably darker. Racist caricatures, political figures, and the visual machinery of American consumer culture collide in works that ask us to confront histories we might prefer to forget. The conversation begins with collage and moves into an expansive discussion of race, memory, representation, and the complicated business of making images. Dunn takes aim at contemporary portraiture, arguing that too many portraits strip their subjects of contradiction, complexity, and humanity. His alternative? Find the dirt. Historical figures are more interesting when we acknowledge the things that make them difficult, compromised, and recognizably human. Along the way, the conversation wanders through Steely Dan, Larry Rivers, Ronald Reagan, comic books, moviegoing, art history, hockey, the Chicago Bears, and the peculiar ways that sports culture might teach the art world something about developing an audience. The discussion also takes us to Dunn's exhibition *Echoes in the Margin* at Troutbeck in Amenia, New York. Curated by Mickalene Thomas and presented with the Wassaic Project, the exhibition brings together works addressing American history and race, including portraits of W. E. B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, and Ida B. Wells. The location is particularly resonant: Troutbeck hosted important NAACP gatherings in 1916 and 1933. Dunn is interested not simply in celebrating historical figures but in recovering their contradictions, personalities, and humanity. It's an episode about the pleasure of looking, the danger of forgetting, and why a little glitter can make some very difficult conversations possible.
Names Dropped: Delano Dunn — https://www.delanodunn.com/ Duncan MacKenzie — https://badatsports.com/ (program website) Brian Andrews — https://badatsports.com/ (program website; individual turns not audio-verified) Arturo Herrera — https://smartcollection.uchicago.edu/objects/973/untitled Michael Ray Charles — https://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/items/detail/interview-michael-ray-charles-24827 Larry Rivers — https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_66.4295 Napoleon Bonaparte — https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_66.4295 (relevant artwork) Jacques-Louis David — https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_66.4295 (relevant artwork) Ronald Reagan — https://www.whitehouse.gov/about-the-white-house/presidents/ronald-reagan/ W. E. B. Du Bois — https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html Langston Hughes — https://poets.org/poet/langston-hughes Ida B. Wells — https://www.nps.gov/people/ida-b-wells.htm Mickalene Thomas — https://www.wassaicproject.org/exhibitions/delano-dunn-echoes-in-the-margin Eve Biddle — https://www.wassaicproject.org/ (organization only; exact role not independently verified) Joel Spingarn — https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html Clarence Thomas — https://www.supremecourt.gov/about/biographies.aspx Harlan Crow — https://www.propublica.org/article/clarence-thomas-luxury-trips-harlan-crow-supreme-court Joel Chandler Harris — https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/joel-chandler-harris-1848-1908/ Vincent Price — https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/7f444b7b-d778-5559-8222-15f9b485ac11/theatre-of-blood Diana Rigg — https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/7f444b7b-d778-5559-8222-15f9b485ac11/theatre-of-blood Shane Gillis — https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live (general program page, not verification of the specific monologue) Echoes in the Margin — https://www.wassaicproject.org/exhibitions/delano-dunn-echoes-in-the-margin Troutbeck — https://troutbeck.com/ Wassaic Project — https://www.wassaicproject.org/ Montague Contemporary — https://www.montaguecontemporary.com/exhibitions/63-echoes-in-the-margin-delano-dunn/overview/ School of the Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/delano-dunn NAACP — https://naacp.org/ Amenia Conference (1916) — https://www.loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/founding-and-early-years.html Second Amenia Conference (1933) — https://loc.gov/exhibits/naacp/the-great-depression.html Art Review – https://artreview.com/ Vanity Fair — https://www.vanityfair.com/ Affordable Art Fair — https://affordableartfair.com/ Art Institute of Chicago — https://www.artic.edu/ Bad at Sports — https://badatsports.com/ Guggenheim Fellowships — https://www.gf.org/ WEB DuBois (Delano Dunn) — https://www.wassaicproject.org/exhibitions/delano-dunn-echoes-in-the-margin The Greatest Homosexual, after "Napoleon in his Study" by David (Larry Rivers, 1964) — https://npg.si.edu/object/npg_66.4295 The Second Greatest Homosexual (Larry Rivers, 1965) — https://www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-6161153 Uncle Remus stories — https://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/joel-chandler-harris-1848-1908/ Steely Dan — https://steelydanofficial.com/ Absolute Batman — https://www.dc.com/ X-Men / Uncanny X-Men — https://www.marvel.com/comics The Sandman — https://www.dc.com/ Commando — https://www.imdb.com/find/?q=Commando%201985 The Breakfast Club — https://www.imdb.com/find/?q=The%20Breakfast%20Club%201985 Menace II Society — https://www.imdb.com/find/?q=Menace%20II%20Society Theatre of Blood (1973) — https://www.bfi.org.uk/film/7f444b7b-d778-5559-8222-15f9b485ac11/theatre-of-blood (corrects 1972) Saturday Night Live — https://www.nbc.com/saturday-night-live Chicago Bears — https://www.chicagobears.com/ Chicago Cubs — https://www.mlb.com/cubs Chicago White Sox — https://www.mlb.com/whitesox Chicago Blackhawks — https://www.nhl.com/blackhawks Los Angeles riots — https://www.history.com/topics/1990s/los-angeles-riots | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 977: E. Saffronia Downing | 21 Oct 2026 | 01:02:33 | |
What can a handful of dirt tell you about where you live? At ACRE Projects in Chicago, the Bad at Sports crew joins ceramic artist E. Saffronia Downing amid her exhibition Pressed Flower to talk about wild clay, the material memory of cities, and what happens when people are invited to mail you their dirt. For Call for Clay, Downing issued open invitations in 2023 and 2025 for participants to send foraged clay, along with letters about where it came from. Published by the John Michael Kohler Arts Center, the resulting book brings together 40 contributors from 19 states and three countries. Part correspondence project, part material archive, it is a portrait of the places we carry around with us—even when they arrive in a Ziploc bag. The conversation moves from Chicago's common bricks and a stream beneath Downing's family home in Baltimore to a mysterious flower-or-gear pressed into an upstate New York sidewalk. There are hand-pinched beads that are also seeds, ceramic tiles embedded in gallery walls, the environmental ethics of taking dirt from the ground, and the industrial operations hidden behind the humble bag of studio clay. Add some kiln-shelf anxiety, colored-pencil drawing on fired ceramics, and an inconclusive effort to determine whether everything is sculpture, and you have a pretty good afternoon at Bad at Sports. Names Dropped: E. Saffronia Downing – https://e-saffronia.net/ Ryan Peter Miller – https://ryanpetermiller.com/about Duncan MacKenzie – https://badatsports.com/broadcast-staff/duncan-mackenzie/ Brian Andrews – https://www.brianandrews.org/ Katherine (Kitty) Ross – https://www.saic.edu/profiles/faculty/katherine-ross Amber Ginsburg – https://www.amberginsburg.com/ Lisa Frank – https://lisafrank.com/ Pressed Flower – https://acreresidency.org/index.php/exhibition/pressed-flower Call for Clay – https://i-n-g-a.com/products/call-for-clay-by-e-saffronia-downing ACRE Projects – https://acreresidency.org/ School of the Art Institute of Chicago — Ceramics – https://www.saic.edu/ceramics Bad Water Gallery (Field Dug Over listing) – https://locatearts.org/exhibitions/knoxville/field-dug-over John Michael Kohler Arts Center – https://www.jmkac.org/ Bad at Sports / Bad at Sportscenter – https://badatsports.com/ Lumpen Radio (WLPN-LP) – https://lumpenradio.com/ Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago – https://mcachicago.org/ Wissahickon Valley Park – https://fow.org/ Mason Stains — Mason Color Works – https://www.masoncolor.com/mason-stains Trapper Keeper — Mead – https://www.mead.com/trapper-keeper-details/ Google Maps – https://www.google.com/maps | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 976: Tony Lewis and Bosco Bae | 13 Oct 2026 | 01:38:44 | |
Duncan MacKenzie and Jesse Malmed sit down with artist Tony Lewis and Bosco Bae, brother of the late Chicago artist Gregory Bae (1986–2021), for a moving, funny, and candid conversation recorded live at PATRON Gallery in Chicago. The occasion is Let's Go Exploring!, a two-person exhibition bringing together work by longtime friends and studio mates Tony Lewis and Gregory Bae. But what begins as a conversation about an exhibition quickly becomes something more complicated: an exploration of friendship, loss, memory, artistic responsibility, and the strange business of keeping an artist's work alive after their death. Tony and Bosco recount the collective efforts to preserve Gregory's work, from moving the contents of his studio and organizing the artist-led archival project CV to making curatorial decisions that Gregory himself might not have agreed with. What should survive? What gets exhibited? Who has the authority to decide? And how can an archive remain experimental, generous, and alive rather than becoming a monument to a fixed history? The group considers the ethics of recreating artworks, a bonsai that might be both alive and doomed, Tony's enormous graphite basketball-court drawing, the politics of Asian American identity, and the sometimes extraordinary generosity of Chicago's artistic community. The exhibition's title comes from the final Calvin and Hobbes comic strip. Name Drops and links:
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| Bad at Sports Episode 975: Paul Nudd | 09 Oct 2026 | 00:57:44 | |
Brian Andrews, Duncan MacKenzie, and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago-area artist Paul Nudd at Spudnik Press, surrounded by the work of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational. Nudd has spent more than two decades producing a gloriously strange universe of hairy organisms, mutant bodies, psychedelic biological forms, and wonderfully unsettling surfaces. His work moves between painting, drawing, printmaking, video, and, most recently, ceramics. But beneath all the slime, crust, and occasional bodily horror is an artist deeply committed to experimentation, collaboration, and the pleasures of making things. The conversation begins with Nudd's long relationship with Chicago's printmaking community, including his legendary 2009 residency at Spudnik Press with cartoonist Onsmith, where the pair produced more than a thousand prints—and apparently sold none of them. Nudd describes why he loves Riso's imperfect surfaces, the magic of working with master printers, his affection for Chicago Imagism, and the importance of preserving uncertainty in the studio. The hosts also investigate whether Nudd's work is actually gross or not. The second half finds Nudd reflecting on the unexpected pleasures of ceramics, his work as an elementary school art teacher, creative attention, and the increasingly porous boundaries between his studio, garden, kitchen, compost heap, and classroom. Recorded at Spudnik Press, Chicago, in conjunction with the closing of the 1st International Milwaukee Riso Invitational. Name drops and links Paul Nudd - https://westernexhibitions.com/artist/paul-nudd/ Onsmith - https://www.spudnikpress.org/people/onsmith/ Chris Flynn - https://cflynnprints.com/ Jim Nutt - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jim_Nutt Peter Saul - https://www.moma.org/artists/5178-peter-saul Chloe Perkis - https://www.chloe-perkis.com/ Big Black - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Black Spudnik Press - https://www.spudnikpress.org/ Western Exhibitions - https://westernexhibitions.com/ Hoofprint - https://www.hoofprintchicago.com/ Marz Community Brewing - https://www.marzbrewery.com/
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| Bad at Sports Episode 974: Mari Eastman | 02 Oct 2026 | 01:00:28 | |
What makes a painting worth saving? What happens when the image in your head refuses to become the image on your panel? And why does everybody want another fox? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Chicago painter Mari Eastman for a conversation recorded at Spudnik Press during its Riso Print Fest. Eastman takes us through the pleasures and frustrations of painting, from translating a beloved fox into a woodblock print to rescuing abandoned paintings with techniques borrowed from Bob Ross. They explore fashion photography, the Chicago figurative painting scene, the peculiar intimacy of appropriated images, and the elusive point where faithful representation can lose the feeling that made an image irresistible in the first place.
Name Drops:
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| Bad at Sports Episode 973: Manuel Mathieu | 30 Sep 2026 | 01:06:47 | |
What do you do when your hope for the future starts to feel fragile? And what can a painting, an act of remembrance, or a bottle of perfume do about it? Duncan MacKenzie sits down with Haitian-born artist Manuel Mathieu at Calgary's Esker Foundation for a conversation that moves between studio practice and the world beyond it. They begin with Mathieu's presentation at the 2026 Venice Biennale, including GENOCIDE and his mosaic Abundance and Drought, then explore archives, erasure, political power, the responsibilities of artists, and whether art can make room for disagreement without closing down empathy. Mathieu talks through the evolution of his paintings, from highly controlled marks to surfaces that scrape, drip, burn, and resist their original plans. He argues that figuration is not abstraction's opposite so much as one of its tools. He and Duncan work through the possibilities of beauty, Haitian Vodou, spirituality, the legacy of Toussaint Louverture, and the difference between changing the world and changing the lives of the people near you.
Name Drops and links
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| Bad at Sports Episode 972: Jeanette Andrews | 29 Sep 2026 | 01:06:47 | |
Artist and magician Jeanette Andrews joins Duncan and Jesse at the Elmhurst Art Museum, the very place where, as a teenager, she began imagining how magic could become contemporary art. Nearly twenty years later, that ambition has become an exhibition. ****Update: The HCL Benefit is November 10th, 2026 Photo: Michael George Name Drop List: Duncan MacKenzie - kurasmackenzie.com Jesse Malmed - uwm.edu/arts/directory/malmed-jesse/ Jeanette Andrews - jeanetteandrewsstudio.com Bad at Sports - badatsports.com Lumpen Radio - lumpenradio.com Elmhurst Art Museum - elmhurstartmuseum.org McCormick House - elmhurstartmuseum.org/architecture Criss Angel - crissangel.com John Cottingham - johncottingham.co.uk Western Philosophy: An Anthology - johncottingham.co.uk/Western-Philosophy/ Max Maven - maxmaven.com The Office - peacocktv.com/stream-tv/the-office Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin - encyclopedia.com/people/literature-and-arts/theater-biographies/jean-eugene-robert-houdin Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago - mcachicago.org Invisible Roses - mcachicago.org/stories/editorial/invisible-roses/ Anton Chekhov - britannica.com/biography/Anton-Chekhov Tom Griffiths - psych.princeton.edu/people/tom-griffiths Revealing ontological commitments by magic - pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/25490128/ High Concept Labs - highconceptlabs.org Harvard metaLAB - metalab.harvard.edu Alan Turing - britannica.com/biography/Alan-Turing Computing Machinery and Intelligence - academic.oup.com/mind/article/LIX/236/433/986238 Taken by Artificial Surprise - jeanetteandrewsstudio.com/taken-by-artificial-surprise Chicago Symphony Orchestra - cso.org In Plain Listen - jeanetteandrewsstudio.com/in-plain-listen-nac University of Houston - uh.edu MIT — Jeanette Andrews visiting-artist profile - arts.mit.edu/people/jeanette-andrews/ On Wonder, Mind, & Magic: Jeanette Andrews - elmhurstartmuseum.org/exhibitions/on%20wonder%20mind%20and%20magic High Concept Labs 2026 Benefit - highconceptlabs.org/events/2026-benefit | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 971: Jean Alexander Frater, Matthew Girson & Dana DeGiulio at Material | 25 Sep 2026 | 00:58:45 | |
What can eight small paintings tell us about the possibilities of an artist-run space? Duncan MacKenzie, joined midway by Jesse Malmed, speaks with Jean Alexander Frater, Matthew Girson, and Dana DeGiulio about a two-person exhibition at Material, Jean's artist-run project space in Chicago's Roscoe Village. Four paintings by Matthew and four by Dana are installed in an alternating sequence, setting up a conversation across the walls rather than dividing the gallery by artist. Their discussion begins with the particular staying power of artist-run Chicago: Dana's work establishing Julius Caesar in 2008, Matthew's earlier project presenting artworks from the cab of a pickup truck, and Jean's decade of making room for other artists at Material. From there, the conversation turns to the peculiar ambitions of intimate paintings, each made within a day. Is choosing a familiar genre conservative? What happens when a painting leaves the studio and enters the social space of an exhibition? And what can an actual encounter with an object offer that a circulating image cannot? The group follows those questions through care, constraint, repetition, touch, and hospitality—with Maggie Nelson, Agnes Martin, Nina Simone, and the art market making appearances along the way. If a painting cannot tell its viewer what to feel, perhaps it can begin a sentence someone else is free to finish.
Names Dropped: Duncan MacKenzie - kurasmackenzie.com/ Jesse Malmed - jessemalmed.net/ Jean Alexander Frater - alexanderfrater.com/home.html Matthew Girson - matthewgirson.com/ Dana DeGiulio - danadegiulio.com/ Agnes Martin - diaart.org/collection/artist-a-to-z/martin-agnes Jackson Pollock - pkhouse.org/ Maggie Nelson - poetryfoundation.org/poets/maggie-nelson Martin Luther King Jr. - thekingcenter.org/about-tkc/martin-luther-king-jr/ Nina Simone - ninasimone.com/biography/ Nick Cave (musician) - nickcave.com/ Bad at Sports - badatsports.com/ Material - thevisualist.org/?p=194120 Julius Caesar - juliuscaesarchicago.net/about-jc Lumpen Radio - lumpenradio.com/ Christie's - christies.com/ Rothko Chapel - rothkochapel.org/ Palace of Versailles - en.chateauversailles.fr/ Google - blog.google/ Steinway & Sons - steinway.com/ Paintings that have the look of paintings that are looked at - thevisualist.org/?p=194120 On Freedom: Four Songs of Care and Constraint - graywolfpress.org/books/freedom-0 Art Song (section of On Freedom) - graywolfpress.org/books/freedom-0 Number 7A, 1948 (Jackson Pollock) - christies.com/en/stories/jackson-pollock-number7a-1948-john-elderfield-44b8c76206ad4793a8dccc3c899ea86f Christie's May 18, 2026 evening auctions - press.christies.com/christies-commences-spring-marquee-week-with-11-billion-in-sales-in-a-single-night/ Project Suncatcher - blog.google/innovation-and-ai/technology/research/google-project-suncatcher/ | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode: 970 - A P(o)or(t)ch Theater with Mark Jeffery, Judd Morrissey and Kristin Mariani | 22 Sep 2026 | 01:06:36 | |
At Spudnik Press in Chicago, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller welcome Mark Jeffery, Judd Morrissey and Kristin Mariani to discuss the Poor Farm Experiment's Leopold Benches: A P(o)or(t)ch Theater (MIDWEST REDUX). Developed through the U.S. Pavilion's PORCH program at the 2025 Venice Architecture Biennale and presented in Chicago at the MCA's Chicago Performs festival, the work turns a porch into a place of observation, invitation, performance and collective play. The conversation moves through Aldo Leopold's benches, stereoscopic photographs and binocular rivalry, Mariani's language-bearing Text Toiles, the choreography of "queer sitting," and the Deeply Choir's role in animating the museum plaza. It also opens onto the project's wider artistic ecology: Michelle Grabner and Brad Killam's Poor Farm in Wisconsin; Mark Jeffery and Kelly Kaczynski's residency practice; the nido residency in Umbria; and an approach to collaboration in which living together, hosting, making and friendship become inseparable. PERFORMANCE: 9/25/2026 - 3pm at the MCA! (Dolly Day)
Names Dropped: Duncan MacKenzie - kurasmackenzie.com Brian Andrews - brianandrews.org Ryan Peter Miller - ryanpetermiller.com/about Mark Jeffery - saic.edu/profiles/faculty/mark-jeffery Judd Morrissey - saic.edu/profiles/faculty/judd-morrissey Kristin Mariani - saic.edu/profiles/faculty/kristin-mariani Kelly Kaczynski - kellyfkaczynski.com/About Michelle Grabner - michellegrabner.com Brad Killam - cod.edu/faculty/websites/killam.html Cynthia Post Hunt - cynthiaposthunt.com/about Aldo Leopold - aldoleopold.org/about/aldo-leopold Shannon Stratton - shannonraestratton.com/about Kelly Lloyd - k-lloyd.com/bio-statement Chris Wood - mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/the-poor-farm-a-poortch-theater-midwest-redux Corey Smith - coreyds.com VALIE EXPORT - valieexport.at Lyubov Popova - moma.org/artists/4694-liubov-popova Varvara Stepanova - moma.org/artists/5643-varvara-stepanova Kay Rosen - kayrosen.com Sol LeWitt - moma.org/artists/3528-sol-lewitt Giotto - nga.gov/artists/1342-giotto Caravaggio - nationalgallery.org.uk/artists/michelangelo-merisi-da-caravaggio Lisa Stone - spacesarchives.org/about-us/spaces-board/lisa-stone Maria Gaspar - mariagaspar.com/bio Ginger Krebs - gingerkrebs.com/home.html Laura Paige Kyber - mcachicago.org/about/who-we-are/people/laura-kyber Joey Orr - joeyorr.com/about Moira Brennan - jeromefdn.org/moira-brennan Lin Hixson - everyhousehasadoor.org Peter Taub - pewcenterarts.org/panelist/peter-taub Vanessa Damilola Macaulay - vanessamacaulay.com/about Leon J. Hilton - taps.brown.edu/people/leon-hilton Bonnie Tyler - bonnietyler.com Mies van der Rohe - miessociety.org Midas (Kelly Kaczynski's dog) - kellyfkaczynski.com/About Leopold Benches / MCA Chicago - mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/the-poor-farm-a-poortch-theater-midwest-redux Poor Farm Experiment - poorfarmexperiment.org Living Within the Play: nido V - poorfarmexperiment.org/?page_id=1427 Spudnik Press - spudnikpress.org MCA Talk: Performance Art in Chicago - mcachicago.org/whats-on/events/mca-talk-performance-art-in-chicago | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 969: Abby Pucker and Chanelle Lacy... It's Cool to Care? | 09 Sep 2026 | 01:16:46 | |
What if the problem with Chicago's art world isn't a shortage of artists, galleries, institutions, or ideas—but a shortage of connective tissue? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie sits down at the Gertie Hub with Gertie founder Abby Pucker and Head of Programming, Partnerships & Membership Chanelle Lacy for a conversation about building audiences, building collectors, and building cultural infrastructure in Chicago. The story starts with Gertie's origin: Abby's long-running interest in getting people into the same room, her return to Chicago during COVID, and a listening tour that revealed a strange contradiction. Chicago had museums, galleries, artists, spaces, and ambitious programming everywhere—but plenty of people still felt like they had nowhere to go and no way into the culture. Gertie emerged as an attempt to close that gap. From there, the conversation becomes a much bigger argument about Chicago. Why does the city produce so many remarkable artists and cultural workers while remaining so difficult for mid-career artists to sustain? When does Chicago's legendary self-reliance become a silo? What happens when "we don't care what New York thinks" stops being freedom and starts becoming a defensive posture? And what kind of infrastructure would make it easier for artists to stay, return, grow, and find audiences here? That leads directly into Chicago Exhibition Week, running September 14–20, 2026: Gertie's citywide effort to make Chicago's existing cultural ecosystem radically easier to enter. Abby and Chanelle talk maps, directories, marketing, partnerships, galleries, museums, new collectors, and the deceptively difficult work of getting people off Instagram and through the door. Along the way, Duncan asks the most basic—and maybe hardest—question: what is the value argument for art? Chanelle answers that art lets us see the world through someone else's eyes and creates a context for difficult conversations. Abby talks about curiosity, connection, discovery, and the pleasure of feeling "in on" a cultural conversation. All three keep circling the same problem: who is building new art fans now? The discussion also wanders happily through Riot Fest, music-festival graphics, the Armory, Coachella, Lollapalooza, art fairs, neighborhood galleries, collecting, Chicago parking, and the possibility of turning a finance professional into an art freak. Then the radio fades out... In the internet-only nugget, the conversation gets into the brass tacks: Gertie Curious and Gertie Curated, membership programming, collection and studio visits, cultural travel, and the relationship between membership and the organization's public-facing work. From there, Abby and Duncan go deep on a question Bad at Sports has wrestled with for years: why build a cultural organization as a for-profit instead of a nonprofit? That opens a long discussion about philanthropy, grants, mission creep, institutional agility, donor power, KPIs, governance, learned dependency, the economics of culture, and whether an art industry can be sustained almost entirely by galleries, auction houses, and charitable giving. The answer, at least here, is not especially tidy—which is why it is worth listening to. It may, however, begin with Abby's simplest proposition: It's cool to care. NAME DROPS / FURTHER READING Guests / Gertie
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| Bad at Sports Episode 968: Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete — It's About Time | 04 Sep 2026 | 01:14:21 | |
What if the most radical thing an artist can do right now is… take their time? This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with curators Abigail Winograd and Dieter Roelstraete, a.k.a. DRAW, to talk about their recent GRAY Chicago exhibition, IT'S ABOUT TIME: Counterproductive Conceptualisms in Chicago. Originally conceived under the much more dangerous title "Slacker Conceptualism," the exhibition gathers ten Chicago-based or Chicago-trained artists around a shared suspicion of productivity, professionalism, polish, legibility, self-branding, and the endless demand that artists explain themselves. The conversation starts with artists who take years to finish paintings, lean things against walls rather than attach them, make objects that seem almost perversely uninterested in becoming commodities, and cultivate what Abigail and Dieter call a kind of "studied nonchalance." From there, things get bigger. What does it mean to make political art without making your politics immediately legible? What happens when opacity becomes an act of resistance? Can refusing productivity itself be political? Why does Chicago—with its strange combination of universities, affordable-ish space, artist-run culture, deep pedagogical histories, and relative distance from the market machinery of New York—make this particular kind of artistic life possible? Along the way we get Pope.L, Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, Michael Asher, Bas Jan Ader, Josef Strau, Cologne in the 1990s, Gen-X slackerdom, cringe comedy, unfinished paintings, unopened packages, boats, sawhorses, kitchen cabinets, artist losers, artist attitudes, the fetish of identity, the problem with virtue signaling, and the revolutionary possibility of simply refusing to hustle. And then the radio turns off. In the web-only afterparty, the conversation expands into earlier generations of Chicago conceptualism, center-versus-periphery arguments, the weird provincialism of assuming New York remains the center of American art, and finally the uncomfortable relationship between art schools, enormous tuition bills, professionalization, and the economic pressure placed on young artists to turn artistic practice into a viable career. Is the artist supposed to produce? Explain? Sell? Educate? Perform an identity? Change the world? Or can you just be an artist? Apparently, in Chicago, you can at least try. NAME DROPS / FURTHER READINGThe exhibition
Curators
Artists in IT'S ABOUT TIME
Conceptual-art ancestors, fellow travelers, and troublemakers
Institutions / places
Image: Dieter Roelstraete and Abigail Winograd Photo by Robert Chase Heishman. Image courtesy of GRAY Chicago/New York | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 967: Georgia Kotretsos with Daniel Tucker | 02 Sep 2026 | 00:30:51 | |
Blurb: Daniel Tucker interviews Georgia Kotretsos about her work with the ΤΗΕ ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY which is conceived of as a Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium with projects throughout Greece and beyond. This interview was conducted at the Twenty-First International Conference on the Arts in Society conference "Modeling Life Systems: Art, Algorithms, Ecologies" at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece. Bio: Georgia Kotretsos is a visual artist, researcher, the founder of the nonprofit organization THE ΤΕΛΟΣ SOCIETY, Arts & Culture Research Lab Observatorium, in Athens, Greece and the publisher of TTS Press, which operates in the field of cultural studies and art research in Greece, the Balkans, the Mediterranean, and the Middle East. TTS focuses on the Greek periphery, the islands, and remote areas. It creates interdisciplinary teams tailored for each project, working collaboratively on site-specific intangible projects that uncover the unique aspects of each locale. TTS publications are available at the following bookstores: Politeia, Ianos, Museum of Cycladic Art, Iambos, Pixel,and Public (online). Through these endeavors, THE TEΛΟΣ SOCIETY highlights the importance of contemporary art and cultural heritage while fostering new creative perspectives and audiences.She holds an MFA in Fine Arts from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (USA, 2004), where she studied on a full merit-based scholarship, and a BFA from the Durban Institute of Technology in KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa (2000), where she relocated as a teenager during the country's post-apartheid transition. Her work systematically critiques conventional theoretical positions on viewing and perceiving artworks, seeking—through liberatory and anarchic visual practices—to reveal that the experience of viewing is site-specific, and that the emancipation of the viewer is a crucial source of artistic knowledge. Her research-based approach—whether in the form of artwork, text, or interview—resists traditional forms and historical modes of acquiring knowledge, proposing alternative methodologies for its creation and reception. Her work has been presented both in Greece and internationally, including at the Onassis Art Center and the Asia Society in New York, the 4th Thessaloniki Biennale of Contemporary Art, the Tinguely Museum (Basel), La Kunsthalle (Mulhouse), the Macedonian Museum of Contemporary Art (Thessaloniki), and the Contemporary Art Museum of St. Louis. She has held seven solo exhibitions and participated in numerous significant international initiatives, including the 56th Venice Biennale, MediaImpact in Moscow, and FIELD MEETING in New York. From 2006 to 2010, she co-founded the independent art space Boots Contemporary Art Space in St. Louis, USA—an alternative contemporary art laboratory—and served as editor-in-chief of BootPrint, a biannual journal by and for artists. From 2009 to 2013, she served as a columnist for Art21 Magazine of PBS Arts Feature in New York, with her column Inside the Artist's Studio. In 2014, her writing was also published on LABKULTUR.TV in Germany. In 2019, Kotretsos published a report on the arts in Greece reflecting on the decade of recession 2008-18 entitled "Athens is the Only Cave in the World that has a Skylight" for the Field Journal in the US. Her works are held in private collections, including the National Bank of Greece, the Mamidakis Foundation, and others. More information about her work can be found at: Georgia Kotretsos portrait for RTIN by Kostas Pappas and the TTS Logo | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 966: Claire Ashley | 17 Aug 2026 | 00:58:10 | |
Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Claire Ashley at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair for a conversation that wanders from broken-down minivans to Scottish standing stones, from inflatable sculpture to protest aesthetics, and from the economics of artistic survival to the philosophy of color. Ashley discusses nearly two decades of building monumental inflatable sculptures that refuse to stay still—works that exist somewhere between architecture, bodies, creatures, performance, and public intervention. They explore why artists should embrace experimentation, why humor can be politically powerful, and how softness, absurdity, and vulnerability can become serious sculptural strategies. Links
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| Bad at Sports Episode 965: Jaymee Harvey Willms | 13 Aug 2026 | 00:55:11 | |
Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, curator, arts administrator, and Door County Contemporary co-founder Jaymee Harvey Willms for an unexpectedly personal and funny conversation. What begins as a discussion about goats unfolds into an exploration of grief, religious deconstruction, contemporary art, and the rituals we create to survive profound loss. Once a painter immersed in saturated color, Jaymee found herself unable to tolerate color at all, turning instead toward broken ceramics, white paint, damaged objects, and sculptures that ask what it means for something broken to continue functioning.
Jaymee Harvey Willms http://www.jaymeeharveywillms.com/ Door County Contemporary https://www.doorcountycontemporary.com/ Familiar (Milwaukee) Walker Art Center Mary Gabriel — Ninth Street Women https://www.joanmitchellfoundation.org/joan-mitchell/citations/ninth-street-women Lee Krasner Jackson Pollock JoAnne Carson Adam Frelin Hair + Nails
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| Bad at Sports Episode 964: Jenal Dolson | 10 Aug 2026 | 00:56:04 | |
Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews are joined by painter Jenal Dolson for a conversation recorded live from the Door County Contemporary Art Fair in Wisconsin. Dolson discusses her vividly textured paintings, her installation practice, and the role of touch, memory, and sensory experience in shaping the visual language of her work. The conversation ranges from tactile abstraction and flocked wallpaper to popcorn ceilings, raccoon vision, painting directly onto gallery walls, collaboration, titling artworks, and why artists continue making work in the first place.
Jenal Dolson Andrew Rafacz Gallery 65GRAND Good Naked Gallery Door County Contemporary Deb Sokolow Trish Tillman Rebecca Morris Chris Cran
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| Bad at Sports Episode 963: Tyson Reeder | 06 Aug 2026 | 00:57:29 | |
Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally welcome painter, educator, and perennial instigator Tyson Reeder to Bad at Sports. Recorded during Door County Contemporary Art Fair, the discussion wanders through the history of Milwaukee's DIY art scene, the legendary Dark Fair, artist-run culture, teaching, painting, collaboration, and the productive tension between sincerity and absurdity. Reeder reflects on organizing exhibitions as artistic experiments rather than scholarly declarations, describing curating as "a speculative mindset" where the question is always what if? The conversation also explores painting's unique solitude, collaborative work with his brother Scott Reeder, the role of humor in contemporary art, regional artistic identity, materiality after the pandemic, why artists still need to stand in front of paintings, and how drawing together can become an antidote to digital isolation. Links Tyson Reeder Scott Reeder https://canadanewyork.com/artists/scott-reeder Canada Gallery Door County Contemporary Art Fair Process Print Shop Swiss Institute White Columns Threewalls Green Gallery Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture
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| Bad at Sports Episode 962: Sophia Chai | 03 Aug 2026 | 00:32:09 | |
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Sophia Chai at the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to discuss photography that insists on becoming something else. Working between painting, sculpture, installation, and large-format analog photography, Chai creates images that challenge our assumptions about perspective, representation, and the mechanics of seeing itself. The conversation moves from camera obscuras and four-by-five view cameras to Plato's Allegory of the Cave, cave painting, Korean language, immigration, and the colonial language embedded within photographic practice. Chai reflects on transforming her graduate studio into a walk-in camera obscura after September 11th, collaborating with architectural space rather than simply depicting it, and asks whether photography might become a practice of witnessing rather than capturing. Name Drops & Links
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| Bad at Sports Episode 961: Tanner MacArthur | 30 Jul 2026 | 01:12:42 | |
Tanner MacArthur joins Bad at Sports live from Door County Contemporary for a conversation that begins with secret fry sauce recipes and somehow ends with the shape of Delaware as a sandwich-eating methodology. MacArthur discusses his dual role as both artist and gallerist through his Milwaukee project space, Addendum, founded alongside James Stepanek as an extension of No Instructions Gallery. The conversation moves through contemporary painting, Midwestern DIY culture, artist-run spaces, collecting habits in the Midwest, labor history, and the strange but fertile ground between formal abstraction and dumpster diving. Tanner speaks about his own assemblage-based painting practice, his evolution from hard-edge abstraction into sculptural wall works built from salvaged materials, and his desire to reconnect with painting's possibilities through color, surface, and material experimentation. The discussion also highlights a growing generation of Milwaukee artists creating new spaces and opportunities outside traditional institutions, including apartment galleries, publishing projects, and experimental exhibition venues. Name Drops and Links:
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| Bad at Sports Episode 960: Shane Walsh | 27 Jul 2026 | 00:39:23 | |
This episode on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, organizer, and Door County Contemporary co-founder Shane Walsh at the close of another sunny and slightly delirious weekend in Door County. The conversation ranges from the growth of the Door County Contemporary fair, the peculiar magic of creating a temporary art community in Wisconsin, and the challenge of building an audience for contemporary art outside major metropolitan centers. Along the way, Shane discusses his own abstract painting practice, the virtues of Detroit-style pizza, and why a successful art fair might really just be "arts summer camp." Shane talks about the evolution of Door County Contemporary from its inaugural edition into a larger and more ambitious event, reflecting on how local partnerships, community engagement, and a relaxed atmosphere have helped make the fair feel distinct from the larger art-world circuit. The crew also dives into Shane's own painting practice: lush, unhinged abstractions informed equally by modernist painting histories and the visual language of 1990s punk culture. The result is a conversation about painting, community, and finding ways to make art experiences feel meaningful, generous, and fun. Name Drops and Links:
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| Bad at Sports Episode 959: Shane McAdams | 23 Jul 2026 | 01:14:47 | |
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller head north to the Door County Contemporary Art Fair to sit down with artist, curator, writer, gallerist, and all-around art evangelist Shane McAdams. Broadcasting from a gazebo in Door County, Wisconsin, the conversation ranges from the weather, custard, and pontoon boats to larger questions about why contemporary art struggles to reach broader publics, why the Midwest needs more artist-run infrastructure, and how we might create healthier cultural ecosystems. McAdams makes the case for a bigger, messier, more porous art world—one where commercial galleries, nonprofits, academia, collectors, artists, and curious newcomers all coexist. This is a conversation about building bridges: between Chicago and Minneapolis, between contemporary art and regional audiences, between artists and the merely art-curious. It is also a reminder that art remains one of the few places where genuine meaning-making and community formation can still occur. Name DropsShane McAdams Door County Contemporary Art Fair Real Tinsel Gallery Saint Kate – The Arts Hotel Peninsula School of Art Claire Ashley David Letterman Marcel Duchamp Robert Ryman James Audubon Mark Glimcher / Pace Gallery Peter Buggenhout University of Chicago University of Georgia Lamar Dodd School of Art Trainspotting Miami Art Week
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| Bad at Sports Episode 958: Rafael Salas | 09 Jul 2026 | 01:12:36 | |
This week Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with artist and educator Rafael Salas for a wide-ranging conversation about rural Wisconsin, magical realism, county fairs, country music, identity, and the contested landscapes of contemporary America. Salas discusses growing up in rural Wisconsin, returning to the Midwest after years in New York, and how his paintings inhabit a space between celebration and unease. The conversation moves from the influence of Wisconsin Death Trip to the political symbolism of county fairs, mixed-race identity, landscape painting traditions, and the challenge of making meaningful contemporary art from outside major art centers. Name Drops and links:
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| Bad at Sports Episode 957: Andrew Rafacz | 02 Jul 2026 | 00:55:33 | |
Recorded live at Door County Contemporary, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller finally correct a seventeen-year oversight and sit down with Chicago gallerist Andrew Rafacz. From the Bucket Rider days in Pilsen to twenty-five years of building a gallery practice rooted in friendship, advocacy, and weird Midwestern generosity, Rafacz reflects on Chicago's changing art scene, the pressures of art fairs, the realities of representation, and why artists shouldn't mistake social media attention for support. Along the way: the Spray Show, shower beers, Cody Hudson, Pace Gallery's roster cuts, and the strange beauty of making things nobody asked for. Name Drops & Links
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| Bad at Sports Episode 956: Phoenix Brown | 29 Jun 2026 | 00:40:27 | |
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Milwaukee-based artist, curator, musician, and all-around multi-hyphenate Phoenix Brown. The conversation begins with Phoenix's drawings in the Portrait Society exhibition and quickly expands into vulnerability, symbolism, self-healing, lizards from Italy, Midwestern art communities, music, curatorial practice, and the challenges of balancing multiple creative lives. Phoenix discusses how personal experiences become encoded into a visual language of recurring symbols—flowers, fire, rivers, and tailless lizards—while reflecting on trust, disclosure, and the ways artists reveal themselves through their work without always saying everything outright. Phoenix also shares details about their work as curator at the Bronzeville Center for the Arts, efforts to build Milwaukee's first museum dedicated to artists of the African diaspora, and their band Home Going. Links
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| Bad at Sports Episode 955: Mindy Rose Schwartz | 25 Jun 2026 | 00:53:54 | |
This week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews, Ryan Peter Miller, and Duncan MacKenzie sit down with Chicago artist Mindy Rose Schwartz to discuss Countersealed, her recent exhibition at M. LeBlanc Gallery. The conversation explores a deeply immersive exhibition built around ceramic scorpions emerging from cracks in the gallery floor, glowing bronze aliens, reconstructed fur animals, monumental incense sculptures, woven memorial forms, and a contemporary incantation bowl based on ancient Mesopotamian protective magic. Schwartz discusses material experimentation, memory, ecology, astrology, political anxiety, and the possibility of making art that is simultaneously playful, hopeful, sentimental, and critical. Name drops and links: Mindy Rose Schwartz – https://www.mindyroseschwartz.com M. Leblanc Gallery - https://mleblancchicago.com/ Louise Bourgeois – https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/louise-bourgeois-2351/art-louise-bourgeois Helen Mirra – https://hmirra.net/ Luba Krejci – https://browngrotta.com/artists/luba-krejci Dr. Justin Sledge – https://www.esoterica.tv King's Leap Gallery – https://www.kingsleapfinearts.com/
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| Bad at Sports Episode 954: Heather Mekkelson | 22 Jun 2026 | 00:55:47 | |
This week on Bad at Sports, Brian Andrews and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with Chicago artist Heather Mekkelson to discuss her recent paired exhibitions, Bass Note at 65GRAND and Snare at Boundary. Across two installations separated by nearly sixteen miles of Chicago, Mekkelson transforms obsolete communication technologies into sprawling sculptural environments wrapped in jute. The conversation explores technological obsolescence, archaeology, sound, labor, environmental extraction, analog nostalgia, artistic trust, and the strange afterlives of the materials we leave behind. From bog-preserved artifacts and ancient spears to dead HDMI cables and power distribution boxes, Mekkelson traces the resonances between human invention and human consequence. Name Drops and links Heather Mekkelson — https://www.heathermekkelson.com/ 65GRAND — https://www.65grand.com/ Boundary — https://www.boundarychicago.space/ Clacton Spear — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clacton_Spear Ancient Danish Corded Skirt (Egtved Girl context) — https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egtved_Girl
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| Bad at Sports Episode 953: George Scheer | 18 Jun 2026 | 00:59:56 | |
Executive Director of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts, former co-founder of Elsewhere Museum, printmaking evangelist, institutional theorist, and recovering residency founder George Scheer joins Duncan and Ryan for a sprawling conversation about artist-centered institutions, the legacy of Robert Blackburn, socially engaged practice, the economics of DIY arts infrastructures, and what happens when artists try to build sustainable worlds inside systems that rarely reward care work. The conversation moves from the legendary Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop to the anarchic magic of Elsewhere's living archive, through New Orleans arts policy, cross-sector cultural work, printmaking discourse, academia, administration, and the impossible balancing act between artists, institutions, donors, and communities. George discusses the evolution of the Elizabeth Foundation for the Arts from grantmaking organization to one of the most significant artist studio and printmaking ecosystems in the country, including the continuation of Blackburn's radical community printshop model and the preservation of a major archive featuring artists like Faith Ringgold, Elizabeth Catlett, and Romare Bearden. Name Drops & Links
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| Bad at Sports Episode 952: Tali Halpern | 15 Jun 2026 | 00:54:15 | |
Bad at Sports Episode 951 has Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller still in Miami for a conversation with Chicago artist Tali Halpern at NADA, representing 1210 Gallery. The conversation spans weaving, sobriety, punk music, queer identity, labor, spectacle, and the ecstatic possibilities of fiber art. Halpern discusses their transition from painting and addiction into weaving, their work with digital looms at Loom Room, and the way embellishment, rhinestones, embroidery, and collage become acts of healing and reconstruction. The episode touches on Chicago's art community, punk aesthetics, club culture, spiritual labor, and the tension between craft traditions and contemporary experimentation. Name Drops & Links
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| Bad at Sports Episode 951: William Powhida | 11 Jun 2026 | 01:11:27 | |
At NADA Miami, Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sandford and returning guest William Powhida dig into the art world's annual power rituals, the shifting geography of cultural influence, Gulf-state biennials, wealth concentration, and the contradictions of contemporary art's relationship to capitalism. Starting from Powhida's commissioned work for the annual ArtReview Power 100 issue, the conversation encompasses discussions of oligarchy, philanthropy, redistribution, art fairs, nationalism, soft power, artist-run infrastructure, and Powhida's ambitious experimental project, the Zero Art Fair.
William Powhida — https://williampowhida.com/ Art Angle Podcast —Art Angle Podcast Nicole Eisenman —https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicole_Eisenman | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 950: Justin H Long | 08 Jun 2026 | 00:54:26 | |
Bad at Sports Episode 947: Justin H. Long Live from the fair circuit heat (not Miami… but spiritually always Miami), Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford catch up with artist Justin H. Long, self-described "original Florida man," to talk boats, comedy, identity, and the strange poetics of nautical culture. Long's sculptural practice moves between deadpan humor and conceptual rigor: a capsized Laser sailboat turned vertical monument, a palm tree replacing its mast, and a title—S.O.S.—that refuses to resolve cleanly into sentiment. From Morse code to yacht club politics, from Spanglish boat names to disaster-relief coolers, Long builds a practice that blends maritime history, Miami mythologies, and a punk-inflected irreverence toward art's seriousness. Also featured in this episode – a CalArts performance art involving chocolate milk vomit, signal flags translating hip-hop lyrics, and why humor still makes the art world uncomfortable. Justin H. Long — https://justinhlong.com
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| Bad at Sports Episode 949: Hilde Lynn Helphenstein | 08 Jun 2026 | 02:22:07 | |
I don't quite know how to start this. It feels important to repost this interview because of Hilde. Hilde Lynn Helpenstein was a kickass human. "Jerry Gogosian" was a lance aimed directly at our pretensions and self-importance. Through Jerry, Hilde developed an incisive understanding of how the art world works. She created a space where many of us felt seen, derided, embarrassed, challenged, or simply able to laugh at our own reflection. She used Jerry to investigate us, for better and worse. In doing so, she exposed the paradoxes, half-truths, and hypocrisies embedded in what we do and how we choose to spend our lives. I think we should have listened more carefully when she tried to take what she had learned and suggest other ways forward. Hilde fucking loved art. More than almost anything. I know that feeling. She knew something wasn't working and she was trying to understand it, diagnose it, and imagine alternatives. What changed for me in this interview was realizing that we were on the same trip. My friend Chris Johanson used to say, "Trip on it, don't fry on it." It's hard not to fry on the thing you love most, especially when you feel responsible for all of it. Hilde was generous and generative. Sadly, the art world can't love you back. It's a little like summer camp: a temporary bubble of perfection that can be difficult to bring back into everyday life. What Hilde wanted, I think, was for us to find a way to reconnect art to the world outside that bubble, and maybe get over ourselves in the process. I, and all of us at Bad at Sports, will miss our fellow traveler. d. | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 948: Esther Park | 04 Jun 2026 | 00:32:35 | |
In this episode of Bad at Sports, recorded at the tail end of a sun-soaked, sweat-drenched, and somehow still magical Miami Art Week, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with curator and cultural programmer Esther Park—the force behind this year's public programming at New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA). Park traces her origin story from working the front desk at the Museum of Contemporary Art North Miami to throwing illegal block parties in Wynwood, to shaping NADA's ambitious "Ecologies" program. The conversation spirals (as it should) into art world mythologies, Miami as mirage, the collapse and reinvention of criticism, and why the real work happens far below the visible surface. This is a conversation about infrastructure, community, exhaustion, joy, and why—despite everything—the ecosystem still matters.
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| Bad at Sports Episode 947: Heather Hubbs | 01 Jun 2026 | 00:40:20 | |
Recorded live in the blazing Miami heat (seriously, surface-of-the-sun conditions), Duncan, Ryan, and crew sit down with Heather Hubbs, Executive Director of the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA), for a conversation about art fairs, artist ecosystems, and what it actually means to build a sustainable contemporary art community. From CBD waters and early-morning whiskey to global art economies and the future of ceramics, this episode captures Bad at Sports at its most "tailgate meets art world summit." Heather walks us through NADA's evolution from a member-driven trade association into a flexible, responsive platform that supports galleries, artists, and experimental projects across Miami, New York, and beyond. The conversation digs into post-pandemic market shifts, the logic behind fair restructuring (goodbye Sunday drag), and how Warsaw is unexpectedly a site of mass public hunger for art. Along the way: project spaces as incubators, ceramics as a rising force, and the enduring legacy of Chicago art world figures who shaped how fairs operate today. Also: inflatable dancing airmen. Chickens. Buttholes. You know, professionalism.
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| Bad at Sports Episode 946: Chris Succo | 28 May 2026 | 01:09:28 | |
Chris Succo joins Duncan MacKenzie, Ryan Peter Miller, and Tom Sanford in Miami for a conversation that slides easily from pronunciation jokes into a deep dive on abstraction, immediacy, and the quiet, often unspoken labor of sustaining an art practice. Succo unpacks a studio logic built on contradiction: paintings that feel fast but are deeply considered, surfaces that appear minimal but hold layers of decision-making, and a practice that balances commercial necessity with experimental risk. The conversation ranges across Succo's "white paintings," photographic references, sculptural work in foundries, and the strange economics of being a working painter. Along the way, the crew hits Miami art fair nostalgia, Miley Cyrus backed by The Flaming Lips, and the enduring romance of making something that might never sell. This one is about intuition, material intelligence, and what it actually means to keep going in the studio. Chris Succo - https://chrissucco.com/images/
Mark LeBlanc — https://mleblancchicago.com/ Richard Prince — https://gagosian.com/artists/richard-prince/
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| Bad at Sports Episode 945: Dreamsong Gallery | 25 May 2026 | 00:43:53 | |
Recorded in the sunburnt delirium of Miami, Duncan and crew stumble out of the Midwest and into the heat of the fairs, only to find a familiar sensibility in an unexpected place: Dreamsong. Rebecca Heidenberg joins the conversation to talk about building a gallery ecosystem in Minneapolis that resists isolation and instead fosters dialogue between regional artists and those working in larger art centers like New York and Los Angeles. From this conversation we get a portrait of a space that operates as both a commercial gallery and something closer to a cultural commons, anchored by programming, residency initiatives, and a commitment to community. From the founding logic of Dreamsong to the evolution of the Cloud House residency program, Rebecca outlines a model that prioritizes relationships over market pressure. The conversation moves fluidly between Minneapolis as a site of artistic possibility, the economics of running a gallery outside New York, and the strange spectacle of Miami's art fair ecosystem, including dystopian crypto exhibitions and phantom Lamborghini launches. Along the way: documentary filmmaking in Cuba, the legacy of an art-dealing mother, the emotional labor embedded in artistic practice, and the ongoing tension between "pretty" art and meaningful engagement in a complicated political moment. It's Midwest pragmatism meets art world absurdity. And somehow, it works. Rebecca Heidenberg — https://dreamsong.art/
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| Bad at Sports Episode 944: Amy Kligman | 21 May 2026 | 01:08:40 | |
Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, this episode finds the crew in full fair-mode: cramped booths, warm beverages, and the particular energy of artists, curators, and dealers trying to make something real happen in public. Joining the conversation is Amy Kligman, founder of Special Effects Gallery, a Kansas City–based gallery barely out of the gate and already showing at fairs. Alongside Tom Sanford, the conversation moves quickly from logistics and booth banter into something deeper: how artists carry histories, how objects hold people, and how a gallery can function less like a marketplace and more like a host. Kligman's project is both scrappy and intentional. Special Effects Gallery is rooted in Kansas City but outward-facing, acting as a connector, a translation device, and maybe even a love letter to regional practice that deserves a broader stage. The name itself comes from her parents' rural Indiana video store, a place that served as a portal to elsewhere - Special Effects Gallery carries that lineage and seeks out a similar ethos.
Amy Kligman — https://www.specialeffectsgallery.com/ https://www.amykligman.com/ Rashawn Griffin — https://www.instagram.com/ras9s/Charlotte Street Foundation — https://charlottestreet.org/ | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 943: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubko | 18 May 2026 | 00:56:53 | |
From the humid chaos of Miami Art Week, Bad at Sports drops into the garden at NADA for a conversation with two artists from Western Exhibitions: Nanako Kono and Olivia Zubkov. A loose, funny, and surprisingly thoughtful discussion about painting that isn't painting, sculpture that remembers your body, and bathrooms as sites of intimacy, memory, and quiet surveillance. Nanako walks through her hyper-flat, acrylic-based "paintings" that live somewhere between screen, object, and comic logic. Olivia counters with slip-cast porcelain sculptures drawn from domestic life. Towels, tiles, soap dishes, and mirrors become witnesses to the private rituals of living. The conversation drifts between material process, Chicago's influence, comic culture, color as personality, and the strange emotional charge of everyday objects. Along the way, there are riffs on boob lights, mold-making ethics, and whether your bathroom fixtures are silently judging you. Ryan Peter Miller — https://badatsports.com Julia Fish — https://juliafish.com/
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| Bad at Sports Episode 942: Embajada Gallery | 14 May 2026 | 00:58:14 | |
Recorded live at NADA Art Fair, Episode 942 features a deeply generous conversation with gallerist and artist Christopher Rivera—founder of Embajada ("Embassy") Gallery in Puerto Rico. Joined by hosts Ryan Peter Miller, Tom Sanford, and William "Bill" Pereda, Rivera discusses artist-led infrastructures, building a gallery as a political and conceptual project, and the evolving ecosystem of Puerto Rican contemporary art. At the center of the conversation is Rivera's presentation of artist Taina Cruz whose hybrid practice—spanning painting, robotics, and installation—anchors the booth. The discussion moves fluidly between artistic identity, diaspora, conceptual vs. formal practices, and the strange alchemy of building a gallery that resists becoming purely commercial. This is also a conversation about organic growth: careers, relationships, and opportunities that emerge through trust, community, and sustained engagement rather than strategy alone.
NADA Art Fair — https://www.newartdealers.org/ Taina Cruz https://tainacruz.com/
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| Bad at Sports Episode 941: Myra Greene | 11 May 2026 | 00:59:52 | |
Recorded live in Atlanta at the Art Papers Symposium at Ponce City Market, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist, educator, and department chair Myra Greene for a conversation on materiality, identity, and the long arc from photography to textiles to weaving. The conversation centers on practice as evolution, about what happens when an artist refuses to stay in one lane, and about how material decisions carry conceptual weight. Greene reflects on her move from Columbia College Chicago to Spelman College, where she helped build a program grounded in storytelling, experimentation, and liberal arts integration. From ambrotypes to fabric dye to loom-based weaving, Greene's work consistently circles a central question: how can identity exist without the body? Name Drops & Links
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| Bad at Sports Episode 940: Emily Llamazales | 29 Apr 2026 | 01:02:19 | |
Recorded live during the Art Papers Symposium in Atlanta, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with artist Emily Llamazales to talk speculative biology, adaptive futures, and sculptural ecosystems that feel equal parts laboratory experiment and sci-fi relic. Emily's work merges biochemistry, ecology, and material experimentation into immersive sculptural forms that hover between organism and artifact. From translucent photo-printed fabrics to ceramic "creatures" built from invasive species logic, her practice imagines a world where mutation is survival and adaptation is aesthetic strategy. The conversation ranges from collaborative exhibition-making and studio ecology to invasive snails, granite outcrops, and the porous boundary between science fiction and real science. Along the way: holography, grant writing, fungi, and the possibility that the future might already be quietly evolving around us.
Name Drops (with links)
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| Bad at Sports Episode 939: Sarah Higgins | 19 Apr 2026 | 00:57:36 | |
Art Papers, Fire Ecology, and Ending Well This week on Bad at Sports, we sit down in Atlanta with Sarah Higgins, Executive and Artistic Director of Art Papers, during the Art Papers symposium. What unfolds is a candid, generous, and surprisingly hopeful conversation about what it means to end something well. As Art Papers approaches its final chapter after nearly 50 years, Higgins lays out a model for institutional closure that resists panic, rejects compromise, and instead asks: what if ending is a form of contribution? From the "fire ecology" framework to radical transparency about budgets, labor, and sustainability, this conversation moves from grief to strategy to something like collective possibility. Along the way: the death of art criticism models, nonprofit fatigue, Chicago parallels, and why maybe nobody is coming to save us. Names Dropped (Bad at Sports style)Sarah Higgins — https://www.artpapers.org | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 938: Tori Tinsley | 15 Apr 2026 | 00:57:50 | |
Recorded live at the Art Papers Symposium in Atlanta, this episode features a deeply personal and wide-ranging conversation with Tori Tinsley. Joined by Brian Andrews and Duncan MacKenzie, Tinsley reflects on caregiving, grief, motherhood, and the evolution of her "hug" figures across painting, sculpture, and animation. Her practice emerges from lived experience, particularly her mother's diagnosis with frontotemporal dementia, and expands into a broader inquiry into emotional labor, embodiment, and the absurdity of contemporary life. Humor, instability, and tenderness coexist in work that resists resolution while remaining deeply accessible. Name Drop List (with links)
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| Bad at Sports Episode 937: Nato Thompson | 13 Apr 2026 | 00:54:04 | |
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Abigail Satinsky sit down with Nato Thompson for a conversation that spans collapsing institutions, alternative economies, and what it actually means to sustain a life in art. Recorded in the context of an art fair ecosystem that increasingly blurs community, commerce, and survival, Thompson reflects on his path from Creative Time to Philadelphia Contemporary (RIP unrealized museum), and into his current multi-pronged practice: consulting, artist support, and the evolving Alternative Art School. What starts as a casual catch-up quickly becomes something sharper: a diagnosis of failing art school models, a critique of nonprofit dependency, and a proposal for artist-centered infrastructures that actually function. Along the way: dark matter artists, subscription economies, global classrooms, refrigerator exhibitions, and the radical idea that maybe art isn't a career ladder at all. Names Dropped (with links)Nato Thompson — https://natothompson.com/ Creative Time — https://creativetime.org/ e-flux — https://www.e-flux.com/ Powerhouse Arts — https://powerhousearts.org/ Raqs Media Collective — https://raqsmediacollective.net/ Times Square Arts — https://www.timessquarenyc.org/times-square-arts | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 936: Damon Locks | 08 Apr 2026 | 01:10:04 | |
Locks' exhibition operates as a split composition: the back gallery leans into layered, exploratory collage rooted in his teaching experience with Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project at Stateville Correctional Center, while the front gallery delivers sharper, declarative works built around text and figuration. The conversation frames this as a kind of A-side / B-side logic, with one space functioning like improvisational jazz and the other like a stripped-down, urgent punk track. Locks pushes back on easy analogies, but embraces the underlying idea: that both bodies of work are driven by different modes of attention and response. A major thread is process. Locks describes an almost anti-archival system of working, where stacks of Xeroxes, prints, and sampled sounds are mentally cataloged rather than digitally organized. This produces a practice grounded in rediscovery and accident, closer to crate-digging than database searching. Equally central is pedagogy. His decade-plus engagement with incarcerated students becomes a generative force, not a side project. The "homework" he assigns becomes his own studio method, expanding into the work shown here and into related musical output like List of Demands. Throughout, Locks positions his work within a lineage that moves fluidly between comic books, punk ephemera, Black radical print culture, and contemporary art. The result is a practice that refuses clean categorization, operating instead as an ongoing negotiation between sound, image, politics, and community. Names DroppedDuncan MacKenzie — https://kurasmackenzie.com/ Damon Locks — https://damonlocks.black/ Goldfinch Gallery — https://goldfinch-gallery.com/ Prison + Neighborhood Arts/Education Project — https://pnaep.org/ Charles White — https://www.artic.edu/artists/23067/charles-white Bad Brains — https://www.badbrains.com/ John Byrne — https://www.lambiek.net/artists/b/byrne_john.htm | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 935: Chicago Critics Roundtable | 06 Apr 2026 | 01:29:19 | |
Guests: Annette LePique, Curtis Anthony Bozif, Pia Singh, Gareth Kaye Recorded with the support of Columbia College Chicago - Colum.edu What happens when you gather a room full of critics in a moment when criticism itself feels both endangered and newly alive? In this long-awaited return to the Chicago Critics Roundtable, Duncan sits down with a new multi-hyphenate crew of writers, curators, artists, and exhibition-makers to unpack the shifting role of criticism in a fractured "art ecology." What emerges is a conversation about care, attention, subjectivity, labor, and the strange intimacy of thinking deeply about someone else's work. From the death of legacy media to the rise of Substack, from writing as love to writing as agitation, this episode positions criticism as a lived, embodied, and often obsessive practice. Criticism is relational, literary, emotional, and deeply entangled with the conditions of making and showing art in Chicago today, and certainly never "neutral". Name Drop List (with links) Duncan MacKenzie—https://kurasmackenzie.com/ | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 934: John Stezaker | 03 Apr 2026 | 00:57:45 | |
Recorded at Gray Gallery This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie, Brian Andrews, and Ryan Peter Miller, sit down with legendary British artist John Stezaker inside the unexpectedly elegant library at Gray Gallery. The conversation centers on Stezaker's recent exhibition RAFT and expands into a wide-ranging meditation on collage, photography, landscape, and the strange psychological terrain "between images." Stezaker reflects on his long-standing practice of working with found imagery, particularly Victorian-era topographical prints and film stills, and how his recent shift into landscape collage emerged during lockdown while living on the coast. What begins as a search for calm quickly mutates into something more unstable, even apocalyptic, mirroring broader cultural and political upheavals. The conversation touches on risk, intuition, the rejection of intentionality, and the generative power of getting lost in one's own archive. Stezaker's framing of collage as a way to examine the "abyss" between images becomes a central thread, offering a compelling rethinking of how we see, construct meaning, and navigate visual culture. There's also a candid and surprisingly funny detour into photography skepticism, pedagogy, and the emotional cycles of artistic production, including what Stezaker calls the "terrible moment" between bodies of work. Names Dropped John Stezaker — https://www.stezaker.com/ Images Stezaker 2025, courtsey Gray Gallery. | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 933: Kate Sierzputowski and EXPO Chicago 2026 | 31 Mar 2026 | 00:57:32 | |
This week on Bad at Sports, Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews sit down with Kate Sierzputowski to talk about the evolving identity of EXPO Chicago under Frieze and what 2026 signals for the fair, the city, and the Midwest at large. Now Director of EXPO, Sierzputowski reflects on scaling up leadership while doubling down on care for Chicago's ecosystem. The 2026 edition marks a shift toward a more curatorial, thematic, and relational fair model: smaller in scale, more intentional in layout, and driven by embedded curatorial frameworks rather than parallel programming. Major highlights include a deep institutional partnership with the Obama Presidential Center, a rethinking of the fair's floor plan and visitor flow, and a stronger emphasis on Midwest networks and inter-city cultural exchange. Across the conversation, Sierzputowski frames EXPO not just as a marketplace, but as a platform for storytelling, regional identity, and long-term relationship building. At stake is a bigger question: what does it mean for Chicago to be both global and defiantly local?
Kate Sierzputowski – EXPO Chicago Director – https://www.artnews.com/art-news/market/kate-sierzputowski-director-expo-chicago-essence-harden-1234760346/ Images by Leslie Hewett and courtesy of EXPO Chicago | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 932: Michi Meko | 23 Mar 2026 | 01:00:59 | |
Recorded at the Art Papers Fire Ecology Symposium, Atlanta Atlanta artist Michi Meko joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews during Art Papers' symposium weekend for a wide-ranging conversation that moves from southern port cities and landscape painting to pandemic solitude, mental health, and the strange spiritual work of making art. Meko discusses his exhibition So Black and So Blue, a body of work developed between New Orleans and Savannah that reflects on color, history, and the charged atmosphere of southern coastal landscapes. Working with shimmering surfaces, deep blues, blacks, and gilded frames, the paintings operate between abstraction and landscape. They draw viewers into spaces that feel both cosmic and terrestrial, somewhere between daybreak and nightfall. The works are designed to be experienced in person, where layers of marks, reflective materials, and shifting color create movement and depth impossible to capture in photographs. The conversation expands into the tension between hard-edge abstraction and expressive mark-making. Meko describes his earlier work using nautical signal flags as coded language about survival and buoyancy in America, while also poking at the seriousness of modernist abstraction. From there, the group debates the emotional power of painting, touching on artists like Mark Rothko and Ellsworth Kelly, asking what makes a work spiritually or emotionally resonant and why some paintings leave viewers cold. A major turning point in Meko's practice came during the COVID-19 shutdown. When Atlanta closed down, he packed his car with camping gear and disappeared into the mountains, spending long stretches alone hiking, fishing, and writing. The period became a personal reckoning. He stopped painting entirely, turned inward, and began confronting anxieties and habits that had previously gone unexamined. Through solitude and outdoor wandering, he reframed landscape not as scenery but as a metaphor for the inner terrain of the mind. When Meko eventually returned to the studio, that experience reshaped his work. The paintings that emerged began to reflect internal states rather than external views. Horizons divide mind and body. Shimmering skies become metaphors for thought and anxiety. Dense fields of mark-making hold viewers inside the work, drawing them in and out of the image in a restless visual rhythm. Throughout the conversation, Meko reflects on the strange transformation that can occur through isolation, describing the experience of leaving society and returning "a little feral, a little monk-like," carrying new perspectives about art, masculinity, therapy, and the ways people search for healing. What emerges is a portrait of an artist navigating between wilderness and studio, darkness and wonder, abstraction and landscape. For Meko, painting becomes both exploration and survival, a way of mapping the landscapes inside ourselves. Name Drop List (Bad at Sports style)
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| Bad at Sports Episode 931: Berenice Vargas Bravo and Krystal Lemonias | 18 Mar 2026 | 01:05:07 | |
Recorded during Miami art week at NADA, Duncan MacKenzie and Ryan Peter Miller sit down with artists Berenice Vargas Bravo and Krystal Lemonias to talk about painting, fiber, migration, labor, and the strange textures of building an art practice across borders. Vargas Bravo and Lemonias both arrived at NADA through Andrew Rafacz Gallery, but their paths into the fair and into the United States are very different. Vargas Bravo, a painter originally from Mexico City and currently completing graduate studies at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, discusses work that reimagines familiar structures of division. Her paintings pull from the visual language of Western painting while subverting its traditions, including a monumental image of a collapsed chain-link fence that imagines the fall of structures meant to separate and contain. The conversation moves through borders as both literal and symbolic constructs, and how living in Chicago has reshaped the stakes of the work. Lemonias, a Jamaican-born artist working in fiber and print processes, describes a practice rooted in care labor, migration, and material culture. Drawing from her experiences as a nanny in the United States, Lemonias incorporates children's clothing, food packaging, and other domestic remnants into textile works that trace the economies of caregiving and consumption. The materials themselves carry the stories of the households they passed through, mapping the intersection of labor, class, and migration that often remains invisible in the art world. Along the way the discussion opens into a larger conversation about mentorship, access, and the informal knowledge that structures the art ecosystem. Lemonias reflects on learning the unwritten rules of American cultural institutions while navigating race, class, and belonging, while Vargas Bravo speaks about the complicated promise of the "American dream" from the perspective of an international artist whose time in Chicago has included both opportunity and trauma. Both artists also unpack the evolving relationships between artists and galleries, describing representation less as a hierarchy than as a collaborative process built on trust and dialogue. Recorded amid the hum of the fair floor at New Art Dealers Alliance during Miami art week, the conversation moves easily from the practical realities of art fairs to the deeper social forces shaping contemporary practice. The result is a candid and thoughtful exchange about what it means to make work in a world structured by borders, labor, and the fragile networks that allow artists to keep going. Name Drop ListBerenice Vargas Bravo — https://berenicevargasbravo.com | |||
| Bad at Sports Episode 930: Antonio Darden | 10 Mar 2026 | 00:57:20 | |
Recorded in Atlanta during the Art Papers symposium: Fire Ecology Artist Antonio Darden joins Duncan MacKenzie and Brian Andrews in Atlanta, where the conversation opens with one of the most arresting images in Darden's recent work: an alien laid out on an autopsy table. What begins as a discussion of a strange installation quickly unfolds into a deeply personal exploration of grief, memory, and the ways artists translate trauma into form. Darden describes the work Last One Left, a project that emerged from a cascade of personal losses: the deaths of his mother, brother, and father, leaving him the final surviving member of his immediate family. The alien body becomes a surrogate figure, a way to approach unbearable realities obliquely. Humor, conspiracy culture, and pop imagery become tools for making painful subjects accessible without dulling their impact. As Darden explains, confronting audiences with a literal body can shut down reflection, but a grey alien opens a space where grief can be processed at a distance before it lands. The conversation moves through the complicated emotional landscape that shaped these works: family histories stretching from Trinidad to New York, the lingering trauma of police violence after his brother's death in Atlanta, and the strange burden of becoming the keeper of a family archive of memories, objects, and stories. Darden reflects on what it means to inherit not only possessions but also responsibility for the narrative of a family's past. From there, the discussion shifts to Darden's increasingly theatrical performance practice. He recounts a recent performance staged in an entirely blacked-out theater that blended wrestling mythology, Atlanta rap history, gospel music, cinematic references, and sculptural staging into a chaotic and emotional ritual. Undertaker imagery, Pastor Troy, Lil' Kim, and The Naked Gun collide in a deliberately excessive spectacle meant to mirror the overwhelming density of memory and grief. Throughout the conversation, Darden describes his work as a kind of mental montage. Cars, hip-hop, conspiracy theories, television shows, and family trauma coexist in the same symbolic landscape. Rather than separating high and low culture, he embraces the full range of references that shape lived experience. The episode also turns toward the future, as Darden reflects on fatherhood and the challenge of raising a young son while carrying the weight of family history. In contrast to the losses that haunt his work, his son's creativity and confidence offer a different kind of legacy. What emerges is a portrait of an artist using humor, spectacle, and cultural collage to navigate the most difficult questions of survival, responsibility, and memory. Name Drop List:Antonio Darden – https://www.antoniogdarden.com
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